Love at First Fight

by Aarons, Carrie

  Now we have to make a concerted effort to spend time together around our work schedules. I have to put up with her nagging me about my lack of cleanliness at her apartment, and she has to listen to me drone on about sports games. I try my best to support her at the end of one of her very long days, where she comes home and cries because one of her students was taken out of an abusive home, or another hasn’t shown up to school in a week. Molly shows me that she’s the very best of humanity each and every day, and I often feel I don’t measure up.

  “Maybe we’ll have us one of these soon.” My tone is sly.

  Molly doesn’t catch on to what I’m saying. “What, a rooftop? Hate to break it to you, buddy, but I’m not really an Upper East Side kind of girl.”

  “This is Tribeca, definitely not the Upper East Side. Regardless, I wasn’t talking about the area we live in. I’ll live wherever you want, as long as it’s not New Jersey,” I tease her, because I love to tease her about her home state.

  “Shush.” She digs an elbow gently into my ribs.

  “But no, I’m not talking about apartments. I’m talking about an engagement party.”

  I feel her body go still, and then she flips her head back, blond hair whipping in the cool wind. Her chin is angled up at me, her eyes wide. “Please tell me you’re not proposing at someone else’s engagement party.”

  My palm presses to her cheek. “What kind of romantic would I be if I did that? No, I’m not asking you here. But I will be asking you. I just wanted you to know that.”

  “Smith, we’ve only been dating for a month.” Molly gives a slight shake of her head.

  “So? I knew within five seconds of meeting you that you’re the woman I want to marry. I love you, and you love me. What else is there to consider?”

  “I’m going to be putting up with your split-second decision making my entire life, aren’t I?” She smiles.

  I nod. “Get used to it, babe.”

  41

  Molly

  It feels like the cold weather sneaks up on us New Yorkers every year, when in reality, it seeps in between the skyscrapers for months.

  And then one day, I’ll be walking through the streets, realizing I need to start bringing my gloves out with me everywhere.

  As Smith and I speed walk down the street to my apartment, I’m fully aware that those gloves would warm my shivering body right about now. We just went out to dinner at this new ramen place he’s been raving about, and not even the two glasses of sake have warmed my blood enough to combat December in the city.

  “Your nose is all pink.” Smith bends down to kiss it as I fish my keys from my purse.

  Letting us through the door to my walk up, I breathe a sigh of relief when the lukewarm air of the tiny lobby hits me. Usually, we stay at Smith’s place on the weekends, but the ramen restaurant was closer to my apartment, so here we are. We’ve worked out a schedule of sorts, my place on school nights, unless he has a really packed night at one of the restaurants, in which case, we sleep separately.

  I hate those nights, as does Smith, because they usually come with a horny phone call or a whiny pre-bed FaceTime that I should just let him order me an Uber to go sleep in his bed. He’s mentioned once or twice, a hundred times, that we should just move in together, and I admit that he’s starting to wear me down.

  Smith isn’t just my boyfriend, he’s my best friend. He’s become my shoulder to lean on, the one I want to talk to whenever anything happens, and the person who makes me feel most comfortable.

  Once we get upstairs, we unwrap our coats and I jack the heat up on my old radiator.

  “Mind if I wash up first?” he asks, an inside joke between us.

  We always make reference to our Hampton’s days of sharing a bathroom, since it was the place that first cemented our relationship.

  “Nope. You go ahead. I’m going to put on some tea.” A steaming cup of chamomile is one of my favorite cold night treats.

  I hear the water going in the bathroom as I futz around the kitchen, and then head into the bedroom to grab a warm pair of pajamas. We might still be in that honeymoon phase of dating, but I’ve never been the type of woman to shun clothing, even if it does seem sexier to my sleeping partner. Smith doesn’t seem to mind my flannel long johns, in fact, he tells me they’re cute.

  When he emerges from the bathroom, he has on plaid pajama pants and nothing else. They’re hanging so low on his hips that I audibly gulp and consider not putting my own pajamas on just yet if he’s going to take them right off.

  But I do need to pee, so I head for the bathroom. And there, sitting on the brim of my sink as I walk in, is my boyfriend’s toothbrush. I swear to all that is holy …

  My annoyance level peaks, thinking back on all the times I asked him to put his shoes by the front door of my apartment, or rinse off a dish before he puts it in my apartment’s twenty-year-old dishwasher.

  I love the man, but his lack of order and cleanly living has been a sticking point between us. Now I get why Heather gave him so much shit about leaving his cereal bowls in the sink at the Hamptons house.

  “Smith, I am going to …”

  I’m about to tell him his toothbrush is going in the garbage, or maybe the toilet if I’m feeling particularly saucy, when I see something sparkle on the handle of it.

  “You’re going to what?” I hear his deep voice behind me, and when I look back, he’s leaning smugly against the doorjamb with his arms folded over his very sexy, very defined pecs.

  “What is that?” My throat is suddenly dry, and I’m hesitant to look back at the toothbrush.

  Because I’m pretty sure, hanging on the handle of his toothbrush which hasn’t been put back in the holder, is a diamond ring.

  He told me two months ago at Peter and Jacinda’s engagement party that he was going to ask me to marry him. I never thought it would be this soon. Sure, Smith is always saying or doing romantic things, it’s one of the things I get to love and have to myself that not many people know about him.

  But I thought he was crazy for saying he wanted to propose after we’d only been back together for a month. My heart stutters in my chest, because now I know I’m the crazy one.

  Because, for the life of me, I can’t think of any reason I should not marry this man. I know he’s about to ask, and while it defies all the rules of dating or being an adult, I would go down to city hall right now and make him my husband.

  Smith takes hold of my hands, and my fingers are trembling in his.

  “You told me a while back that you thought you’d be planning your wedding within the next year. And that stuck with me. Not because you were talking about another man, but because I wanted you to see, so desperately, that I was supposed to be the one you were marrying. I know you might think this is fast, that a lot of people might think that. But I’ve been in love with you for a long time—what seems like forever—and when I know what I want, I don’t wait. I love you, Molly. I promise, I will try for the rest of my life to make you happy, and I’ll always keep you safe. Marry me? Make me the happiest damn man on the planet?”

  Smith kneels in front of me, reaching around my body to take his toothbrush off the sink and hold it up to me. The diamond ring is cushioned in the grip of the turquoise handle, and I already feel the waterworks pouring down my cheeks.

  I’m so glad, so freaking glad that I waited for this moment. That I didn’t try to push it with Justin, or go settling for a man that my heart wasn’t one hundred percent head over heels for. This is what they mean when they say true love, this right here. Having Smith be the only man to get down on one knee, the only man to ever ask me this question, it makes it all that much more special.

  “Yes. Yes! One hundred percent, yes.” I nod like a maniac, falling into his arms.

  He catches me, nearly dropping the toothbrush with the ring hung around it, and I’m showering his face in kisses.

  “We’re getting married.” I sob, so deliriously excited.

  Smith pull
s back a little, enough so that he can slide the ring onto my left hand. “I can’t wait to make you Mrs. Redfield.”

  As I study the sparkling, gorgeous oval now adorning my ring finger, neither can I.

  “Looks like I’ll be planning a wedding after all.” I burst out laughing.

  “The only one you we’re ever supposed to plan,” Smith confirms, and covers his mouth with mine.

  After that, we don’t talk for a good, long while.

  Epilogue

  Molly

  One Year Later

  How strange it is to be back here, more than a year later, with a ring on my finger and my heart in a completely different place?

  Last June, I stepped foot in this beach house with a broken heart, a guarded soul, and the notion that the man rooming right next to me hated my guts. Now, I was watching the sunset from the balcony of my summer house room on the night before my wedding day while the love of my life slept in the room right beside mine. What had started as a summer of self-discovery and reinventing myself had ended with me finding my soul mate.

  In those first few weeks in the summer house last year, I lamented that I should have been falling in love with Justin and working toward planning our wedding, our life. And then Smith hit me like a train I couldn’t have avoided if I wanted to, and I am sure glad he’d been so upfront. If he hadn’t been, I wouldn’t be in the place I am now.

  Blissfully happy, completely in love, and a nervous wreck.

  Because even if I am one hundred and ten percent certain about who I am marrying, I have jitters that everything will go as perfectly as I planned it. Heather called me the most precise and organized bride on the planet, and I wouldn’t deny that I am. But I am one of those little girls who dreamed of her wedding day, and I want it to go off without a hitch when I get hitched.

  We decided not to get married in the summer, since it’s way too hot and I’ve always envisioned a fall wedding. September nuptials might not line up perfectly with my school schedule, but my principal and fellow teachers were helping out while I got to take a honeymoon.

  Plus, it’s off season in the Hamptons, and that means cheaper stays for our guests and nothing would be as crowded. When Smith had first floated the idea of getting married on the beach just outside our summer rental house, and then holding the reception in the backyard, I balked. My parents were warming up to Smith, thanks to his crazy, loud, blue-collar family they met on several occasions. But it didn’t mean they were going to be gung-ho about a Hamptons wedding. Over the course of a couple weeks, though, Smith had plead his case.

  It will be a down-to-earth affair, with a dreamy white tent set up on the tennis court, right next to the pool. There are fairy lights and there will be fun music, the sound of the ocean and food from our favorite places we discovered together last summer. All of our closest friends and family are here, and we’ll join our lives together while standing on the very beach where Smith first kissed me in front of our roommates. It is perfect, kismet.

  Smith keeps claiming that he’s going to buy this entire beach house, but I keep shushing him and telling him that’s a crazy thing to say. Why do I have a feeling, after this, that he’s actually going to do it? He’ll say that no one else can reside in our beach house, or play on the sand where we got married.

  With the success of Stefania, he probably could buy it. Since the restaurant’s opening, it’s been featured on numerous lists both locally and nationally, and the chef who runs the kitchen won a James Beard award for the food served there. Last month, Smith and Campbell were asked to be guest judges on a very well-known reality cooking show, and they rated so high that the show has asked them on as permanent judges next season.

  My fiancé, so weird yet heart-melting to call him that, hasn’t decided if he’ll take the job yet. It’s a lot of intense filming time over twelve weeks, and it’s just months after we’ll get back from our honeymoon. Smith is wavering, but I think he should do it. We’re not the type to hold each other back from something that will make us happy, and I can manage for a few months. I know, deep down, he really wants to do it, and I’ll end up nudging him in that direction.

  Just like he nudged me to leave my waitress position at Aja, and come work as the front of house manager a couple nights a week at Stefania. Of course, my full-time job is still in teaching. I go to school each day and try my hardest to provide for and support my students. But I’m a natural born worker, I’ve been raised to have two or even three jobs at a time. I wouldn’t, and couldn’t ethically, just stop waiting tables because my future husband owned restaurants or made quadruple my annual salary. I told Smith as much, and don’t want to rely on his money, though he was firm about combining our accounts. He said that’s what married couples do, joined their lives together, and finances were something we were always going to talk about and do together. As logical and mathematical as it is, it was also kind of romantic when he said that.

  No, the argument he finally made that convinced me to leave Aja was that I was working for a competing restaurant, and it made sense. Once Smith and I were married, what was his became mine. He’s going to be my family, and as such, those restaurants would be my family business. It only made sense for me to come work for him, though he kept saying I didn’t need to work a second job at all.

  I love it, though. I had so many years of waiting experience, that it was a fun challenge to manage all of the waiters at Stefania and keep the whole floor moving. It also meant I got to spend more time with Smith, because there wasn’t a night where he wasn’t at one of his three restaurants. Typically, he’s at Stefania, and I think it’s because he feels closest to his twin sister when he’s working there.

  Smith honors Steph every day through his work, but he did end up mustering up his courage and giving a speech at her memorial in January. It was beautiful and touching, and cemented even further the idea that he was a kind, caring, giving man. I can’t wait to marry him.

  From the corner of my eye, I can make out my wedding dress hanging in the closet, and my heart flutters. It’s the exact one I’ve always dreamed of. A strapless A-line lacy beauty that makes me look as elegant as it does makes me look like a princess.

  The doorknob to my room jiggles, and then a tiptoeing Smith creeps in, shirtless in nothing but his boxers.

  “What are you doing in here? This is bad luck!” I slap my own hands over my eyes, because maybe if I can’t see him, he won’t see me.

  It’s dumb logic, but I’m a superstitious bride. I’m also traditional, and told Smith he shouldn’t even be sleeping in the bedroom next to me, but he convinced me this was our thing. Clearly, it was so he could sneak into my room.

  “It’s not bad luck at all. Plus, it’s almost midnight, which means it’s our wedding day. Which means I get to see you as much as I want.” I feel his large hands grip my waist, and I can’t help but wind my arms around his neck.

  My eyes still aren’t open though. “Midnight? It’s barely nine o’clock, but nice try.”

  When Smith speaks, his voice tickles my ear, and I feel his lips on the lobe. “Can you blame a man? My soon-to-be wife drives me crazy. How can I keep away when we’ve done some very scandalous, secret things in these bedrooms?”

  My knees practically buckle. Lord, does this man know how to literally sweep me off my feet.

  Finally, I open my eyes, and Smith’s are dazzling before me. “I can’t wait to marry you.”

  “And I can’t wait until you’re my wife. I think we should practice for the wedding night. Right now.”

  I throw my head back to chuckle, but Smith is sneaky, taking the opportunity to nibble on my neck. It sends tingles shooting down my spine, and they settle right between my legs.

  It seems surreal that tomorrow I’ll be walking down the aisle to the man I once thought hated my guts. Now, he’s going to be my husband, and I am so ridiculously in love with him that I would probably let him sleep in my room tonight, tradition be damned.

  I just c
ouldn’t stand to be away from him most times. And tomorrow afternoon, I officially would never have to be again.

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  Standalones:

  Nerdy Little Secret

  That’s the Way I Loved You

  Fool Me Twice

  Hometown Heartless

  The Tenth Girl

  You’re the One I Don’t Want

  Privileged

  Elite

  Red Card

  Down We’ll Come, Baby

  As Long As You Hate Me

  All the Frogs in Manhattan

  Save the Date

  Melt

  When Stars Burn Out

  Ghost in His Eyes

  On Thin Ice

  Kissed by Reality

  The Rogue Academy Series:

  The Second Coming

  The Lion Heart

  The Mighty Anchor

  The Nash Brothers Series:

  Fleeting

  Forgiven

  Flutter

  Falter